Much More than A Room Full Of Books

In the last weeks, we were really busy with our Master and Dina setting up a new library room in our house. We had rented out this room before. For a long time, we thought about how to use this space. Should it become a space for storage as we don’t have a cellar?
That’s the shadow side of collecting, it needs space. Dina was adamant that these piles of books in our rooms and books on books and in front of books on shelves have to go. Obediently, we created not a space for storage but a home for about a thousand books.

“To build up a library is to create a life. It’s never just a random collection of books.” Carlos María Domínguez, ‘The House of Paper’

We discussed hotly with our Master, being a specialist for colours, which colour scheme we should choose for this room. In the end, we agreed on white and shades of light grey. The walls were painted in strong colours before as you can see in older pictures. We thought that rather neutral colours would be soothing as books are already quite colourful. Besides white creates a pleasant sense of space. White makes this big room even seem bigger and higher. This was one reason why small rooms like toilets are traditionally painted white.

Choosing colours was our most pleasant task. But to get some workmen to come needed energy with that one could establish empires in former times. In the end, we did everything ourselves, sanding the floor, painting, plastering and getting the shelves up. We were astonished how much we could do without any help.

When everything was done Ikea delivered 9 bookshelves. Our master full of naive optimism thought we could get them up in 2 hours. Nonsense! With securing the shelves to walls and sawing holes for the sockets it took us 9 hours. But that was easy work in comparison to filling the shelves. First, we needed a plan for how to organise the books. Our Master loves plans but he wasn’t aware of what hard work it is to shift a thousand books to fill the shelves. Stooping, dragging, stretching without an end. This is more effective than visiting a fitness studio – what we would never do.

We asked ourselves “Why do we collect books?” Goethe wrote that collectors are happy people. Freud thought they are anal fixed as they love to hold. When we asked our Master he answered that it’s satisfying to create an order. He rationalised his passion: “It creates security to fight chaos with order!” Dina was rather taken by the aesthetics: “the new, sensible order creates beauty, clarity and a certain lightness!” We Bookfayries didn’t dare to tell them that they (probably) are fallen back to the stage of hunters and collectors. But don’t be afraid, we save them of not to be fully in the grip of an uncontrolled passion for collecting as Honore de Balzac has been.

In Hay-on-Wye we saw bookmarks for indicating first, signed and personally dedicated editions. Do you have a system for marking special books?Anyway, our library room is finished and immediately became our favourite room in which we are writing this text. To get an idea, Dina took some pictures with the help of us Bookfayries with her new camera. Well, Dina bought a Fuji XT3 mirrorless camera with a Fujinon 16-55mm f2.8 lens. Now she doesn’t struggle with piles of books any longer but as a Nikon-Fan she is struggling with the Fuji-system, so completely different from what she is used to.

“Book collecting! First editions and best editions; old books and new books – the ones you like and want to have around you. Thousands of ’em. I’ve had more honest satisfaction and happiness collecting books than anything else I’ve ever done in life.” Peter Ruber, ‘The Last Bookman’

Congratulations on a wonderful room and doing it yourselves. I re-read most of my books several times and am jealous not only of your room but also the extent of your book collection. I think just one column form your stacks could handle my collection with plenty of room for future growth. 🙂

Dear David,
thank you very much 🙂 🙂
The problem always is the room for future growth. As all the books are in alphabetical order within the different topics it’s always hard to get new ones in if the shelves are fully filled. So we tried it with some space and hope for the best. That’s about 10% of our book collection, the rest is in the other rooms in the house. 10% less books there means space for books to come.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

We think, book collections are very individual. One has to collect the books oneself. But our dear Master experienced something different a couple of years ago. He inherited a huge collection of mostly art book from a person he only saw once because he gave her a lift. She died a couple of months later and made, to his great astonishment, our dear Master inherit her book collection. She has had the same interests as our Master.
But I, Klausbernd, have the feeling that our beloved Bookfayries were manipulating there. But who knows. They will not tell.

How to organise the books that we can use them, meaning easily find a certain book, was the great question. As 10% of our library went into this room that was a chance for a new order of books there as well as in the house.
Thanks for commenting and liking our setup 🙂 🙂
Wishing you a happy weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

I use CLZCollecter-Books. I like it, but I never take the time to fill in the book’s location, because it changes frequently at first. So it’s my own fault I can’t find the ones I’m looking for all the time.

We sometimes looked for days to find a certain book before we used this programme.
Did you experience that too, you look for a book at a place you are sure that it’s there but you can’t find it. The next day you look again and it’s there. Are the Bookfayries playing tricks or what is it?
We googled the CLZ Bookcollector. It more or less does the same as our programme.
Wishing you an easy week
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Your hard work has reaped such a wonderful space! I so wish I could be a part of it. And how wonderful that you HAVE such space. My brother passed last year and left me about 800 books. Sadly, as I live in an apartment, I could only keep about 50. But I found happy, appropriate homes for the rest. Some are in the library of our local historic aircraft restorations society, for example.
Then there were the hundreds of coins he left me. Australian pre-decimal, Australian decimal and coins from all around the world. There was even a beautiful silver medallion from Germany inscribed dornroschen, which you will realise depicted the Sleeping Beauty.
Now it is his die-cast model cars that I am sorting.
If only I had such a space as yours I could have kept everything 🙂

Dear Gwendoline,
the big challenge is to find the space for collections. Every collection is asking for space. For books one needs lots of free wall-space.
As Sue wrote, it’s a shame that you couldn’t keep your brother’s collections. But passing it on to appropriate homes is fine, isn’t it?
Dornröschen, the Sleeping Beauty – that must be a beautiful silver medallion. This motive was popular in Jugendstil (Art Nouveau).
Thanks a lot for your commentary 🙂 🙂 and all the best with sorting the model cars.
Wishing you a happy weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

I sent the coins to auction earlier this month. There were hundreds of them, and it had taken me about three months to look at every one. The sleeping beauty medallion was with them. I’m a bit sorry now, I could have made a necklace, to wear and think of my brother. That is the challenge when a family member receives a huge collection, it is so overwhelming that you can’t think clearly. Another thing I am sad about, is that as I go through this process, the books, the coins, the cars – I meet people who had like interests to him. He became a bit reclusive over the years, and it is a pity that now I am meeting his “tribe”, people he would have felt comfortable with and enjoyed happy hours of conversations. But I am happy when I find those people, as I know his things are going to be loved as much as he did love them.
Life lessons for all ofus, I think.

Dear Gwendoline,
when we have to part from collections it’s so important to find people or institutions who honour and love them.
Interesting what you write about getting to know your brother’s tribe. Indeed, a lot of collectors know each other and are like minded.
Have a happy Sunday
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Guess what Klausbernd. On account of our internet conversation, and in memory of my brother, I went back to the auctioneer, and asked him to contact the buyer about my brother’s Dornroschen medallion. In the end, I bought it back from the dealer, (yes! he made a good profit LOL),. Then I had it made into a neck pendant and bought a new silver chain to hang it from. Now I wear it every day. It is similar to this medallion. https://i.pinimg.com/736x/04/a9/33/04a933d2179c14615ea0eeeea2f02560–nursery-rhymes-vintage-silver.jpg

Thanks, dear Gwendoline, for the picture. Well, Dornröschen is the symbol of the lady (the anima following C.G. Jung) who wants to be erotically awaken. The magic kiss …
Great that you got this medallion back and wear it. We are sure that your brother would like you wearing it.
All the best
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
P.S.
Have you read this fairy tale in the collection of the Grimm brothers?

Well I had no idea about the Jung connection. Wow!
Most children of my era read classic “fairy” tales such as Aesop’s Fables, Hans Christian Anderson and the Grimm Brothers. Looking back on the Grimm’s as an adult, some of their concepts are downright scary and dark. Not at all the way Walt Disney would have us think of Sleeping Beauty 🙂

Dear Gwendoline
the Grimm brother were ethnologists. They were collecting fairy tales to document the history of literature. Actually they saw their collection of fairy tales as a scientific document. When they noticed that it was read by ‘normal’ people to their children they slightly changed the texts (that is the version that became well known) by making it more acceptable. F.e. the horrible mothers became stepmothers etc. Andersen is different. He is a classic Romantic poet writing literary fairy tales as they were fashionable in his time. That’s poetry like Bechstein’s, ETA Hoffmann’s, Tieck’s and Hauff’s fairy tales.
Walt Disney transformed fairy tales into mawkish tales.

Dear Vicki,
that’s GREAT that you like our new room 🙂 🙂 Oh dear, we nearly converted it into a storage room or garage. That would have been a shame!
Dina has a good eye for old furniture. She spotted all the chairs in antique and charity shops.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Oh, I loved a similar project, some years ago! So satisfying. But this old lady warns you …. one day, you may move somewhere smaller as your needs change. You may be obliged to downsize your library. This feels about as impossible as murdering your children. We did this recently. Horrible.

Dear Margaret,
oh dear, actually we know but repress it. Our Master is the oldest of us, he is in his seventies, but when he will be eighty or ninety …
Even now we had big problems giving whole sections of our library away (for reasons of space) although we weren’t not interested in these subjects any more and hadn’t touched one of these books for years. But giving them away was like murder.
But Dina and our beloved Bookfayries are much younger. Well, we will see.
Thanks and wishing you an easy weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

We too have moved several times in the past 7 years since I retired, each new house smaller than the last. So half our books had to go. Some found happy homes with friends who needed them. But it is like losing part of your history and therefore part of yourself.

The new fashion is decluttering your house and this should give lightness and freedom but at least that doesn’t refer to books (or to every collection). We had to give our library away before we went living in Montreal. It was horrible, we felt bereaved too. We still regret it although it’s more than 30 years ago.

Dear Derrick,
when we bought this house about 30 years ago this was a garage. Later it was a guest room and in the last year our gardener lived there.
IKEA Billy bookshelves are the friends of every booklover.
Thanks and cheers
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Fabulous! Love the colour scheme and how you’ve done the shelves. I changed from Nikon to Fuji a few years ago and have never looked back. I swapped my D700 for an XT1, since upgraded to the XT2. The 16-55 is a great lens. It did take a bit of getting used to as it is quite different to Nikon, but I’m sure Hanna will get the hang of it and I look forward to seeing the outcomes!

Dear Fraggle,
great that you like our colours and shelving unit. We thought white shelving in a white room is ideal.
About the camera Dina will write later.
Thanks and enjoy the weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Hi FR, the Fuji is indeed different to my beloved (and heavy) Nikon and I’m still struggling with the settings. A friend with the same camera will help me next week and I’m sure I’ll master it one day. What do you use for editing your photos? I might be wrong, but I have a feeling LR is not the best program from Fuji. Do you have any favourite lenses beside the 16-55? Thank you very much for helping out! 🙂
Much love, Hanne

I LOVE your library! What an inviting room! I find a home without books a soulless place- I have 1 or 2 bookshelves in each room (well, I am in a flat, so not so many rooms!) BUT I would love to have a library area….now I have to get thinking!!

Dear Sue,
for a long time our dear Master lived on his own in our house and so it has several library rooms. But with Dina’s and our Bookfayrie’s taste that room is the most beautiful.
We could well imagine a combination of library and bedroom. Well, we Bookfayries sleep in the library anyway. Being surrounded by books gives great dreams!
Thanks for commenting 🙂 🙂 and wishing you a happy weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Dear Frederic,
thanks a lot for liking our new library room. To furnish this room we changed our living room as well. The library is our morning room and the living room has become our evening room. Dina and Selma 🙂 always have great ideas how to change our rooms and make them even more cosy. Well, that has the effect that we don’t want to leave the house any more.
Looking forward seeing you at Briston in an hour
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

GOSH, how wonderful. Airy light and so spacious. ❤ I love books (and with my name it's an obligation. 🙂 Space is always a problem for a book-nerd. Well done on you.
Is the lovely little table in the right corner a turnaround one? My father used to have one of those.
Congratulations to this achievement!!

Dear Elly,
yes, that little table-bookshelf is indeed a turnaround one. We found it at kind of junk yard and cleaned, restored and polished it. Siri 🙂 and 🙂 Selma love to turn it – and we do as well 🙂 🙂
Books need a lot of space unfortunately. But we hope having solved the space problem for the next years. We’ll see.
Thank you very much 🙂 🙂
Wishing you a wonderful weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭
We envy your family name 😉

Dear Petra,
it was our aim that the books become the main ‘persons’ in our new library room and that we have enough space for working there.
There is enough room now to let our minds go wandering.
Thanks and cheers
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Good afternoon, dear Alexis,
we are very happy with the room now. We have two favourite rooms in our house and they are very different. One is our new library room the other is our living room which is full of books as well. But the styling is different. It’s with an open fire, a sofa and many flowers – in a way more old fashioned. That’s our ‘evening-room’.
Wishing you an easy weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Fab Four of Cley,
As I have one complete wall filled with books in the living room and the dining room, I am well aware of how comforting they can be! In fact I wish I had back all the books I’ve given away over the years. You worked hard on this room and it shows. I can well imagine anyone of you spending plenty of time in there!
Have a wonderful weekend, my friends!
GP Cox

Dear GP Cox,
we worked every day there for 9 to 10 hours for a fortnight. Partly it was hard work like sanding down the floor. But we saw a progress every day what kept us going. We haven’t done everything yet but the time being it’s fine and we are very happy with this room now.
It’s very comfy being surrounded with books. Now we don’t want to leave this room.
Did you buy a shelving unit or did you build the shelves yourself? In all our other other rooms we built the shelves ourselves. Now we are very happy with this shelving system as it can take quite some weight (35 kg per board).
We suppose you have lots of books as well. All the history you are covering on your blog needs a lot of reference books we suppose.
We wish our dear American friend a wonderful weekend as well and thanks for commenting
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Hi, dear Edie,
indeed, you are right this is the transformation of a room from feeding the body to feeding the head. That’s it! The books drove out cooker and fridge.
Thanks and wishing you a wonderful weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

The room looks awesome. There is something about a room full of books read and to be read that brings comfort. We could settle there awhile and know you will too. We like how you presented the story to illustrate the new room.

Thank you very much for liking our new library room and how we presented it. After all the work the presentation was great fun.
We love to be in this room. It’s inspiring to work there and relaxing just sitting there reading.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Hi, dear Laurie,
don’t be library jealous! The disadvantage of this room is you don’t want to leave it. Our garden is already complaining that we all the time sit inside.
Thank you very much and wishing you great weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Dear Peter,
actually, Dina and Selma 🙂 got the idea to use the space like this. They always have such great ideas. And a room dedicated to books only was something we always wanted to have. Now we can’t stop reading and looking at art books. In this room we have all our art books and all the books connected with Scandinavia and the polar regions.
We wish you and your family a wonderful weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

This is exactly what we do there! Siri 🙂 is just reading together with our Master “The Gardener’s Perspective” by Håkon Nesser and Selma 🙂 with our dear Dina flicks through some photo magazines. Outside it’s quite a wind.
Thanks and happy weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

It’s lovely!!! There’s just nothing like holding a good book in your hands! I prefer it rather than reading a screen. I thought I had a vast library, but yours is quite larger! I noticed the alcohol & books hang out together in the same room 🙂

Dear Dawn,
we only read real books and sometimes listen to audio books but we would never ever read a book on the screen.
Alcohol and books go very well together 😉 Remember how many authors liked their drink (often too much).
In this library room we have about 10% of our book collection. It’s the art books (including photography) and books about the North and the polar regions only.
Thanks and cheers, have a happy weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Indeed, and I thought it neat for spirits to be kept with that which encapsulates spirits of another sort. 10% you say… oh my! Well, my puny library, in comparison has a similar organization, but that applies to shelves of bookcases, not entire rooms : ) I’m glad to see books appreciated or cherished when the world is changing so. We hope your weekend is a happy one as well.

Dear Dawn,
thank you very much 🙂 🙂
We love books and couldn’t live without.
To organise our library shelves we use a computer programme – a professional library programme – otherwise we would loose our overview.
Wishing you a happy Sunday
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Dear Allan,
we enjoy our new room very much. There is enough space to let our mind go wandering. It’s just a room where we get lots of inspirations.
Thank you for commenting and liking our new room.
Wishing you a relaxing weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Oh my goodness! It is so bright and nice and really brings a warmth to the room. Personal libraries are such a joy to have in a house, it was the number one room I had to introduce Kaylee when she first came to us. It turned out amazing, such a perfect project.

Thank you very much for commenting and for liking our new library room.
We have quite a big book collection and so we have several library rooms in our house. They are all different. One is with a big sofa and an open fire. That’s our evening room. Another one is quite small, ideal for concentrating and our Master’s office is full as full can be with dictionaries and reference books.
Wishing you a happy weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

What a fabulous room and so inviting. I have always wanted a library room, with a wood burning stove and leather tub chairs to curl up in, somewhere snug. Yours is light and bright and cheerful and I can see you all spending many hours there – well the Bookfayries will be very busy keeping them dust free and tidy! A perfect place to relax in.

Dear Jude,
our other library room is more like your dream: a wood burning stove, a big sofa and comfy chairs and about as many books as in our new library room. There are living the crime and seafarer’s stories and our collection of books about pirates. That’s our evening room.
Siri 🙂 and 🙂 Selma are really so sweet. They keep our white library room meticulously clean – well, until now …
With lots of love from the east coast – very windy today
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Dear Anne,
we love this library room in our house. It’s our day-time-libary-room. We have a night-time-library-room as well. This has as many books but it’s more old fashioned with sofa and open fire. We love to be surrounded by books. – We know that our library-rooms are a luxury, but a little luxury is nice when you get older, isn’t it?
Thanks for your kind words.
We wish you a great weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Dear Gallivanta,
no, we didn’t keep the kitchen. We got rid of the fridge, cooker and sink. Well, this has three reasons: One is that our kitchen is only a few steps away from there. The second is a tax reason as we have to pay quite some extra taxes for the Annexe if there are cooking facilities. But funnily enough this room has its own bathroom with shower. Library with loo and shower 🙂 🙂 And the third reason is concerning aesthetics or you could call it styling. Books only seemed to us a clearer styling.
Thanks and happy weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Dear Louis,
you are absolutely right. But we will keep at least two to three hours free for reading and writing daily. We already do this for years, but, of course, not when we were working on this room.
Thanks for commenting.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Dear Jennie,
we choose white as it makes the books stand out, exactly as you write. Another reason was space and light. We are very happy with the result 🙂 🙂
Thanks and love
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

I LOVE your library – it is simply the most inviting space! I especially appreciate that you organized your shelves in a way that highlights specific books. You will spend hours in this welcoming room. I see that you have comfy chairs and have made room for others to join you. I had to add this quotes by T.S. Eliot: “The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man” Books saved me – and continue to do so because they allow me to experience other realities, walk in another’s person’s footsteps, laugh and cry with the authors, and feel inspired to join the grand conversation that transcends, time, space, location. Much love and many hugs coming to my dear friends, the Fab Four of Cley.

Dear Clanmother Rebecca,
this new library room is already our favourite room in the house.
We love being surrounded by books we like and read. Of course, there are also the books we want to read. We need books to be happy, to see that there are other worlds than ours.
You spotted it, there is place enough for meeting friends. Well, you have to visit again for having a look.
Our dear friend, thanks a lot for your kind words. We send you hugs and kisses xxxx
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Love it! Peggy and I have about 3000 books hanging around in book cases throughout our house. Every room has some. But my very special room is the library. I always wanted one and Peggy agreed it would be a great idea. It is now my favorite writing room. You guys did a fabulous job! Hats off to you. –Curt

Thanks a lot, dear Curt 🙂 🙂
We do nearly all of our writing and reading in the library. Books inspire. When our dear Master worked as an author he got his best ideas when he was reading. In these time he quite often wrote in public libraries.
Great that you like our new library room 🙂 🙂
All the best
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Your library is a beautiful room! I am pleased to see that there is space for more books in the future. I have long thought that our garage would be a good place to build a library but I haven’t yet found the right moment to mention it to my husband. He would prefer that I give away some of my books, but I can’t. I wish you all great joy of your new library!
Best wishes, Clare 🙂 🙂

Good morning, dear Clare,
it is very essential to leave place for new books to come. That was the problem with the bookshelves in our house, they were all jam packed, no more space for new books.
A garage is an ideal place to convert into a library because of all the free wall space. It’s relatively easy to put up shelves in an empty room. But it needs an insulation as books love a dry climate.
We hope you can persuade your husband to convert the garage in a beautiful library. What you see on the pictures here was originally a double garage. We left the breeze block structure on the walls following Le Corbusier’s style not to hide basic structures.
Thank you very much for your comment.
All the best
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Dear Sue,
we were astonished during the renovation what a beautiful room we could create there. Quite a lot of ideas we got during the process of renovation. And now it’s the room we love most in our house.
Thanks for your comment and enjoy this Sunday
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

And of course there’s the famous remark from poet Jorge Luis Borges: “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”

You’ve done a remarkable job of creating a well-ordered and comfortable library. I hope you have many many hours of good reading!

Regarding the “marking” of special books. I really don’t have any system other than putting them all one shelf. What amazes me the most is, by and large, with my own library, my books are not placed in any particular order, and yet I usually have no problem finding the book I want. Still, I am jealous of that lovely, long wall of books you have there. 🙂

Dear Paul,
you’ll find a lot of great sentences concerning books in “The Library of Babel”, a book we really like.
Freud would call that analfixation: We ordered our books concerning different subjects and then within the subject we use an alphabetical order. In very few categories like books from the middle ages we organised our books historically. Besides this we have a library programme helping us finding certain books.
To have long walls with shelves is easy when starting with an empty room. It was more difficult in our other library rooms with some furniture you have to integrate in your shelving system or to cope with inclined walls.
Anyway, we are very happy with this room 🙂 🙂
Thanks for commenting and your great wishes 🙂 🙂
Wishing you a lot of time for reading as well
The Fab Four of Cley
💃👭🚶‍♂️

Post Scriptum
I just saw that you are an authors as well. So it might interest you that before I retired my library was ordered and re-ordered following the books and film-scripts I was writing.
Under the grey cupboard you find 3 shelves with nearly all the books of mine which were published. Vain?

To the Fab Four,
What a great post! I LOVE your library and how you transformed that room to hold the collection of books so beautifully. When I look at it, I get energized and relaxed all at the same time. White is a good color for it.

Good afternoon, dear Debbie,
thank you very much for liking our new library room 🙂 🙂 and your kind words.
What books we collect:
1. Scandinavian authors
2. books about the North and polar regions – especially logs and history of exploration
3. Classics in German, Norwegian, English, and Swedish
4. books about colour and art (that includes Dina’s collection of books about photography)
But we also have quite some shelves filled with nautical books, especially piracy. We love to find first and signed editions.
Wishing you a wonderful week to come
The Fab Four of Cley
💃👭🚶‍♂️

Dear Nil,
during my student times I had bookshelves made of wooden boxes as well. Very practical! Now we are settled down and surrounding us with ‘proper’ bookshelves. That’s bourgeoisification, isn’t it? We can’t escape this with age 😉
Auch dir liebe Grüße
The Fab Four of Cley
💃👭🚶‍♂️

Klausbernd, your library is a place I would like to stay overnight and let all the books speak to me!
As a former bookseller in my past, I am still in love with books, although coming to the USA, 29 years ago I changed my career to become a professional photographer, books are still my passion; somehow those two go together in a way.
I love the fact that you did all the renovations yourself, because that makes it really yourself and adds a special spirit to your library. Enjoy all the wonderful reading hours and the calmness of your new room. May the spirits of books are always with you All of you.

Good morning, dear Cornelia,
you wouldn’t believe it I was a bookseller as well. I had a two bookshops in Cologne after I came back from Montreal and started my career as a writer.
Yes, photography and reading as well as writing go very well together. The writer helps the photographer to become aware why she or he takes that pictures and why from this perspective. So Siri 🙂 and me help Dina to find her style or to say it with Foucault to find her ideology. Whereas Dina and Selma 🙂 help Siri 🙂 and me not to loose grounding by getting too abstract. We love our discussions about the different views of what we call reality as a photographer and as a writer.
You are right, it gives this library room a special atmosphere that we did all by ourselves, it’s 100% us with all this little imperfections. We feel very well in this room. We didn’t foresee that our library has not only become a room for reading and writing but for entertaining guests as well.
Thank you for kind wishes 🙂 🙂 We wish you a wonderful week
The Fab Four of Cley
💃👭🚶‍♂️
If you are in Europe come around and stay a night in our library. You are VERY welcome!

Well done for creating the space yourselves, with such hard work. Now you have a wonderful room to enjoy every day, surrounded by the things you love the most.
As always, I am impressed with the wonderful photos, the interesting text and quotes. But now I have your wonderful library to impress me to.
Love from Beetley, Pete and Ollie. X

Hi, dear Pete,
aren’t you curious to see this room and not only a picture of this room? Isn’t it time to come around and have a look?
Thanks a lot for your kind words. Yes, it was quite hard work and now we are happy that it is (more or less) done. We are already enjoying our library very much.
Love from the little village next the big sea
The Fab Four of Cley
💃👭🚶‍♂️

Dear Ann,
thank you so much! 🙂 🙂
It took us a fortnight to create this room, well, working about ten hours daily. We are so happy that it’s more or less done. We very much enjoy this room now for reading and writing 🙂 🙂
Thanks for the Plato-quote!
Wishing you a great week
The Fab Four of Cley
💃👭🚶‍♂️

WOW!! I can’t believe this is the room where I have spent so many nights during the past 20 years or more! Congratulations, Fab Four, this is amazing! 🙂
But; surely this is only a small part of your collection of books? You must have had a system for getting those books into the new room, I suppose, it can’t be only the surplus, the piles on top. 😉 I recognise many Scandinavian authors here, art and photography.
Anyway, it looks smashing, arty and very different to anything I know from Rhu Sila.
Now very much looking forward to seeing it soon with my own eyes.
Klem,
Per Magnus x

Our dear Nordic Friend,
well, these are a bit less than 10% of all our books.
We thought about a system first. Which categories we’ll move onto the new shelves and what effect would that have for our overflowing shelves in the house. After a plan we moved from the house
1. all books about the Arctic and Antarctic
2. Explorers polar regions and in generell
3. art including photography and colour
4. Scandinavian, Finnish, Icelandic, Innuit and Chukchi literature
5. Biografies
6. our Mastercher’s books
Now the German, English and American literatures don’t have this crowded shelves any longer and crime and horror has also more space.
Indeed, it makes quite a difference to the rest of the house. There we made some changes too. You have to come and see.
Lots of love
KLEM
The Fab Four of Cley
💃👭🚶‍♂️
XXXX

I honestly can’t believe this is the same room where I have spent so many nights as a guest of yours! Amazing, my dear friends. Congratulations! 🙂 Your new library looks very arty and classy, cosy and inviting. Up til now I have always regarded Rhu Sila as a library, you have books everywhere. Obviously we are only viewing a fraction of your books on the photos here. Moving a part of a library must have been an interesting job for the four of you. 🙂
Now I’m very much looking forward to having a private viewing.
Take care. See you soon.
Klem
Per Magnus

Dear Nehal,
you have to see that our library has grown over nearly 50 years. Dina and, of course, our Bookfayries are booklovers and our dear Master studied Germanic literature and philosophy and started collecting books more or less systematically from his university times onwards. In a way, we Fab Four are bound together by books or one could say we are fictional, Dina and Selma produce pictures and our Master wrote fiction. But books need space and resist moving by being horribly heavy.
Thanks and have a happy week
The Fab Four of Cley
💃👭🚶‍♂️

You are very welcome.
We are just busy marking all our first editions, signed copies and books with a dedication of the authors. As our beloved Master being an author he exchanges books with other authors – signed or even with dedication, of course.

What a marvellous space! You have no doubt heard of shed envy (a condition that afflicts the male of the species specifically), well now I have annex envy – or should I say library envy. I must come and visit soon and perhaps make a modest ritual offering to this literary shrine. Warm greetings from Norwich. Laurence

Dear Laurence,
oh dear, shed-annex-library envy … Which remedy will help against it?
Yes, you have to come for a visit and to have a look at our book-shrine. You know, you are VERY welcome.
The disadvantage is that our gardener has gone. So we have care for our garden and ground by ourselves. But in a way that’s good otherwise we would turn into couch potatoes. Today we have to cut one of our long hedges – big action!
We hope to see you soon.
Warm greetings from the sea
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Good morning,
yes, it was worth all the work and we are very happy now 🙂 🙂 It became the ideal room in our house to read, to think and to write.
Thanks and wishing you a happy day
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

What an absolutely spectacular room! So beautiful and so peaceful; a wonderful place to escape the chaos of the day! Five years ago, my husband and I sold our home and all our belongings (after giving our kids the chance to take what they wanted) and my only regret is I miss my books, my flowers and my dog! Thank you for sharing!

Dear Jane,
we love our new library room very much 🙂 🙂
We can’t imagine to downsize. That would be a great drama. We cannot move because a little more than 10.000 books are holding us in our home. We don’t mind but enjoy it.
We can very well imagine how you regret giving away your books and leaving your plants behind. We love gardening as well.
Thanks for commenting. Wishing you a great holiday
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Great renovation ~ the room does look bigger (thanks for the tip on how white does this), and mostly the room looks so relaxing and a perfect place to sit down and find something to read. Great idea taking this space to fulfill something even more important, and that is support for your reading habits. Great quote, “That’s the shadow side of collecting, it needs space…” Since I rarely back in my home in Seattle, I’ve actually had to discard many things I held dear and collected in the past and then surprisingly found out how easy it was to let them go…although letting go of books, which I haven’t done, I think would be difficult. Cheers to a great day.

Good morning, dear Dalo,
it’s great having a light and spacious room for reading and writing. Having books around is inspiring.
Letting go of our book collection would be hard. One of the basic teachings of Buddha is “don’t attached”. Oh dear, we are very much attached to our books. Well, enlightenment comes later …
Thanks for your comment and have a great day
The Fab Four of Cley
💃🚶‍♂️👭

Thank you very much for your kind words 🙂 🙂
This new library room in our house is ideal for reading and writing. We are just sitting there writing this answer. It’s the lightest room in our house overlooking the front garden and drive. We love it 🙂 🙂
All the best
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Good afternoon, dear Charlotte,
thanks for liking our new library room and for your comment. We love Ikea because of its clear Scandinavian design, no pompous big furniture with old fashioned decorations.
It’s our most used room now.
Wishing you a happy week
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

I can see you’ve been very busy as a 4-member team creating your beautiful space. You must be so happy with the job-well-done! My granddaughter and I assembled her Ikea dressers and I now know why I didn’t choose furniture building as a career! I too transitioned fully from my beloved Nikon equipment to the Fuji (mine is a bit older, an X-T2). It takes a bit of work to make the change and learn the new system but I truly love it and hope by now you do too Hanne. Hope to see more of you now that the room is finished!

Good afternoon, dear Tina,
putting up this Ikea-shelves took much longer than expected. We wouldn’t be the right folks for furniture building neither. Now we are very happy with our new library room and spend most of our time in there.
Hanne-Dina will write about her life with the new camera – it seems to be quite a difference changing from Nikon to Fuji.
We wish you a great week
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Dear Lady Fi,
we are quite old fashioned loving real books we can touch. Of course, place is aways a problem collecting books. But we don’t like reading on a screen. We have a neighbour who loves her Kindle. She can’t understand that we don’t have one. Maybe one day we’ll have a Kindle as well, who knows?
Thank you very much for commenting.
Wishing you a happy day
The Fab Four of Cley
💃👭🚶‍♂️

Now, that’s my kind of room. Why collect books? What a stupid question – I would say, but I know it’s not a proper answer. Well, I don’t need to excuse my passion for books as it seems like you don’t either. The only exception maybe being when I move the tons of books from one place to another, or make a now library as you have done here. Enjoy and keep reading!

Good morning, dear Otto,
why collect books? We didn’t ask ourselves the questions why we collect like most of the collectors. Of course, we could rationalise it, we collect books because that’s our visit to other worlds without travelling – very ecological. And we love reading and being surrounded by books.
Great that you like our library room. We are just renovating another library room in our house. Well, so we keep ourselves busy 😉
You enjoy your books as well 🙂
The Fab Four of Cley

I didn’t get a notification of this post, I found it though, hence late…. This is a fantastic room and I would love to be in there and spend a good time with books there. You have done a great job, it looks cosy, it looks inviting, it looks peaceful, just perfect with a good book. Crisps are already there too, I see. Beautiful indeed!

well, this is one of our library rooms hosting books and booze 😉 – and the crisps. It’s our favourite room now but, oh dear, we are renovating and decluttering our living room now. We are giving our rooms a more up-to-date feel which means for us creating place for books and empty spaces. When I bought this house I lived in empty rooms, just a beautiful carpet, some bookshelves and no other furniture. I did everything on the floor and loved it. Very ZEN, white walls, wooden floors and thick carpets. With Dina and our Bookfayries moving in came furniture too and more and more things we now trying to get rid of again.

Great that you like our creation of this library room. Thank you very much 🙂 🙂
Wishing you a wonderful rest of the week
Klausbernd and the rest of the Fab Four of Cley
💃👭🚶‍♂️

I love this space. How wonderful to have a room devoted to your books. That would be my dream. Over the years I have probably owned a similar number of books, but lack of space has meant that I have had to be ruthless and only keep favourites.

Dear Elaine,
actually, we have several rooms in our house devoted to our book collection, but this is the most beautiful – or like Siri 🙂 and 🙂 Selma seeing it, our second most beautiful library room. Besides this we have two other rooms filled with books – the entire wallspace is used for shelves there which we built ourselves. Well, we live between books. Very bookish, indeed. But collecting books is an addiction. And to organise these books that you find a certain book again that’s quite a challenge. We do this with a library programme and our books are more or less in an alphanumerical order.
We know, it’s crazy but we love it 🙂 🙂

Dear Elaine
Indeed, I have quite often the trouble to choose a book to read. I just read “Dreams by the Sea” by the Swedish author Björn Larsson. Before that I read “Shantaram” by Gregory Roberts. It was especially hard to decide what to read next after this thrilling novel.
Wishing you a happy day
Klausbernd 🙂

Dear Derrick,
our dear Master with Selma’s 🙂 help built our most of our bookcases and all bookcases in this room we got from IKEA.
Thanks for commenting. We hope that July will be a great month for you
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Dear Erwin,
as a professional writer it was part of our Master’s job having his head full of books and using these infos to write new ones.
Thanks for commenting and wishing you a great weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Dear Robert,
you are absolutely right. Organising books is quite a job and because of limited shelf space a never ending job as well, but, as you say, lots and lots of fun 🙂 🙂
We feel as you write in your gravatar text living in a Euro-critical country but feeling European.
Thanks for commenting.
Wishing you a GREAT weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

We love books. I have obtained about 1500 French books from Paris and Brussels since 1975. I have also about 1000 books in Spanish and Portuguese together. I have naturally Finnish books and my wife about two hundred together. So, we love books. and read them every night before sleeping.

Dear Sartenada,
we always read before sleeping as well. It’s so cosy reading in the bed.
Actually, our dear Master tried to learn Finnish but he wasn’t that successful and now he has it all forgotten as he didn’t practise it.
Wishing you a cosy evening
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂